Rebirth Flame
by Margot the Mad American Muggle
Summary: pretty much, Kuja falls in love, but the object of his affections isn't exactly human. non-yaoi. Review and read.


Silver Dragon: Rebirth Flame  
  
Bubble, bubble, hiss. What? An unidentified noise... This sound did not exist on Gaia... nor on Terra, if his information was correct. Wait, though. Terra and the Genomes were gone. Destroyed... How?   
"Aargh!" It hurt to think about it. Best to leave it alone for now... Where was this?   
The HyperWorld. I'm glad to hear that your spirit lives. Can you open your eyes?  
Who are you?  
A good question. I am Phoenix, Angel of Life. Now it is my turn. Who are you?  
I am not sure. I cannot remember.  
I am sure your damaged memory engrams will heal quickly. For the time being I wish that you would remain here until I can determine where you come from.  
Terra... I am of Red Terra.  
Red Terra, eh? The twin of Gaia9? I know that place. The Genomes lived there until they had to move to the Outer Continent. If I am correct, there were two brothers of that land who played pivotal roles in defeating Garland and stopping the assimilation of Gaia by Terra.   
Brothers? I remember brothers. Brothers are people who are very similar to each other.  
Sort of. Not the entire definition of "brother", but very good for someone who just lost his memory. Now how about opening your eyes...?  
I'll try.  
The man opened his eyes. Sitting near him was a woman with faintly glowing golden eyes. Her hair was brown and tipped with reddish-gold fire and a pair of golden wings were folded on her back. When he looked a little more closely at her hair, he noticed that near the top of her head were two fiery feathers dancing from side to side. Looking down at his own hair he saw that it wasa pearlish-opalescent color.  
"Now, was that really so hard?"  
Sort of.  
"But you're glad you did?"  
Yes... but how can you hear me?  
"Quite simple really. Since you're not making an effort to keep me out, I can just talk to you inside your head, or listen inside your head and then talk to you verbally."  
Will you always be listening to my thoughts?  
"No, not all the time. That would be rude. I won't talk to you like this unless you ask me to first."  
So I can trust you not to manipulate what I'm thinking?  
"If I tried to manipulate people with my powers, the Council would take them away."  
A fitting punishment. Abuse your powers, they get taken away.   
"Do you want something to eat?"  
Food? The man with opal hair suddenly realized he was very hungry. When had he last eaten? That was also inaccessable due to damaged memory. Oh, well. Food was food and hungry was hungry. It was lunch time.  
Phoenix set a loaf of Soru bread on the table. Her guest should be able to eat now that he was awake. He seemed a little bit confused but only as if he had forgotten something and was unable to figure out what. Then again, that was why he was confused. But why wouldn't he be? He had been nearly dead when she found him and he had been in a coma for at least eighteen months. She had to admit that she hadn't held out much hope that he would ever recover, but nor did she know why she had tried to help him in the first place. She had been exploring a large and violent tree when she heard his spirit instinctively sending out a distress signal. Phoenix felt that distress signal as powerfully as if someone had stabbed her through the heart. She had flown through the violent roots following the call and had come upon a young man with opalescent hair lying on a high rock. He was unconcious and she sensed that he had very little life left in him, so she took him back to her house in the Hyperworld to see if she could heal him.   
She was, after all, exactly what her name implied. She was a phoenix, not as a bird, but a woman-phoenix, like a type of fairy. She could heal things that were even seconds from dying, and she was a legend among many star systems, especially Gaia. People would search for her and, quite often, feathers fallen from her wings to heal things that were beyond the help of curing magic.  
She had been certain that Curaga would have no effect on her guest and she had been right. In the end, Phoenix had had to use adapted nanoprobes to regenerate his badly damaged spinal cord. After that, his heart beat on its own and he could breathe without a assistance from machines.  
That had been six months ago and only today had his spirit awakened and sought to speak to her. He looked up at her and she realized that she had been staring blankly toward him as she thought. He thought something and then went back to eating. Another thought entered Phoenix's mind. Now that he was awake, how quickly would his memory return? She simply dismissed it to trouble her another day.  
  
"Sir, we have entered the Gaia system. Your orders?"  
"Collect samples of the Crystal and put them in cargo bay 1 with a level 10 force field around them, very high security."  
"Yes, sir."  
  
Six moths later.  
Farewell, Zidane...  
Yawn. What a strange dream. The opal-haired man had been fighting some people in this dream... one man had a tail like his own... and then he had been inside a tree dying. But most strangely of all, they had known his name. Wait, his name! What was his name? Phoenix had never called him by his name... she had always called him "Friend". How could he possibly have lived for six months without a name? He had a name... but it was locked in one of those damaged memory engrams that appeared to be the key to all the strange stuff he saw in his dreams.  
Sniff, sniff. Gasp! He was very late waking up and from the smell of things, Phoenix was already awake and in addition to making bread for the week, she was brewing a special potion, most likely a healing potion for repairing the damage to his memory engrams. She seemed very focused on that. He was very lucky she was or he would never have recovered many of the things he knew so quickly. He really appreciated her helping him. He didn't even really know why she was helping him, but something he had heard long ago seemed to fit: You don't need a reason to help people. He started downstairs to help Phoenix with breakfast and the potion.  
Phoenix was lost in thought... again, and yet again, she was thinking about the opal-haired man. He still had not been able to remember his name. She really needed to get those last engrams working so he could be a whole person. But what would happen when he was fully healed? He would just go on his way, whichever way that may be. Sigh. She would really miss him. The two of them got along very well and she greatly enjoyed his company. It would be hard to live alone again... Interrupting her train of thought, her opal-haired friend rushed down the stairs.   
"Sorry I'm late," he said.  
"It's all right. I woke up late too," she reassured him. He seemed to feel better after that. A scary thought crossed Phoenix's mind. When he remembered who he was before she had found him, would he... change? When she had first found him, he was surrounded by an aura of fading evil. Had he been evil? He certainly wasn't now. She was so lost in thought that she failed to hear the loud banging on her door. After coming to her senses, Phoenix opened the door to admit the visitor, a Type 2 Black Waltz.   
The opal-haired man became very frightened. He recognised the witch-like creature that greeted Phoenix. He had seen similar creatures in his past... among the damaged engrams...  
"You're a Vivi, aren't you!" he shouted at it.  
"I beg your pardon?!" the visitor shouted back.  
"She's a Type 2 Black Waltz, but her name is Vivi," said Phoenix.  
"Then the little ones with big hats are called Vivis?"  
"No, there is one boy with a tall hat whose name is also Vivi, but there is no species so designated," the Vivi said.  
"So Vivi is your name?" the opal-haired man asked. "You sure are lucky to have a name."  
"And you do not?"  
"No. I can't find it."  
"Find?"  
It was at this point, seeing that Vivi and her Friend were not on the same wavelength, that Phoenix decided to intervene.  
"I found him at the Iifa Tree 2 years ago and brought him back here. He woke up six months ago and has spent that time trying to access what is in his damaged memory engrams. So far we've restored all but 2 engrams and those two contain the answers to where he comes from and who he is."  
"Ah."  
"We're going to find out what those engrams hide soon enough, though. They can't stay hidden forever," Phoenix finished.  
"Well, I come on a less... hopeful errand. I bring news from the Council."  
"News? Good or bad?"  
"Grave news which does not concern your opal-haired friend."  
"Oh... Friend, would you please wait for me upstairs in the book-room?"  
He agreeably complied.  
"So... what is this 'grave news' which my Friend could not hear?"  
"It concerns the Crystal."  
"Didn't a man destroy the Crystal 2 years ago?"  
"Yes, but a new Crystal grew in its place, more powerful than the last. Sorceress Saria has detected a foreign vessel resting on the surface of the Crystal."  
"And you're trusting the word of a Sorceress because?"  
"Because she's been on the Council as long as any of us and not once broken our trust."  
"Except for playing a million practical jokes on all of you."  
"We all agree that this is not something we joke about."  
"Fine. What about the ship?"  
"It is collecting samples of the Crystal and loading them into its cargo bay."  
"Why are we concerned with this? Has the great Sorceress told you they plan on using it to grate their Parmesan cheese?" Phoenix asked annoyedly.  
"She has determined that they are malevolent and seek to use the samples they collect for war."  
"And how, exactly, does this concern me?"  
"You appear to be somehow connected with the solution to this problem."  
"Does the Sorceress ever say anything that makes sense to people?!"  
"What do you think?"  
"I think she should take all this forseeing-psychic stuff and stuff it up her-" Phoenix's tirade was interrupted by the sound of her Friend dropping, apparently, quite a few books. Both Phoenix and Vivi rushed upstairs where they found the opal-haired man sitting on the floor with a Bestiary lying open in front of him.   
The book-room was larger inside than it was outside, a feat accomplished by Phoenix using her magic, and it looked like the kind of library one would find in a grand castle, again influenced by magic. The walls were covered with two stories of shelves accessed via a ladder that rolled along two tracks, one on the ceiling and one on the floor. The windows were dressed in velvet curtains tied with gold cords. By the fireplace and facing it stood two plush armchairs glowing with warmth. Phoenix's opal haired friend was sitting by one of the windows, the Bestiary opened to the "Collectives" section, the page boldly displaying the heading "Empires". Phoenix walked over to her friend.  
"I heard a loud noise up here a few minutes ago. Are you alright?"  
"Yeah, something just startled me."  
"Like what?"  
"Not a monster. I thought I saw something weird. I was so startled that I backed into a pile of books. That's where I found this one," he said, holding up the Bestiary. Phoenix scanned the page. This book was one of her more recent acquisitions. It featured all known monsters and evil forces discovered up until about a year ago. She had looked over it but not bothered to read it in depth.   
The "Collectives" section had been added since the last edition, owing to the need for a section featuring Antagonists who did not act independently, such as the Borg. "Antagonist" was defined as "any being who would knowingly risks its own life for a destructive goal motivated by greed, a thirst for blood, or a love of decay; any being controlled by such described above". Collectives were considered to be the second part of the previously mentioned definition, which (even though it is not important anyway) had its exceptions. It was Vivi who finally broke the silence.  
"May I borrow this book?" she asked thoughtfully. Phoenix looked at her opal-haired friend. He nodded. "Alrighty, then. Sorceress Saria may be able to identify the foreigners with this book."  
"Hope so. Last thing we need is people going after the Crystal unnoticed." 


End file.
